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Guest Post: We Are Not Entertained by Aigner Loren Wilson

There’s this common misconception that the world of editing (in the sense of submitting your story to a magazine or contest) is an absolute puzzle constantly being shifted around by angry and jaded editors. In classes, writing groups, and even among non-writers, I hear it repeated that you have to have this unknowable combination of luck and talent to land a spot in a magazine, and it isn’t worth trying or learning. You got it or you don’t.

But that type of thinking leaves most people without it.

I want to say that in my years as a reader, judge, and developmental editor none of that is true. Especially about editors. We’re not shadowed goblins lying in wait to crush every writers’ dream. The reason we got into this line of work is because we want to hear a good story, a new story. We want to be entertained.

But unfortunately, most of the time, we are not. We are left wondering where’s the story.

And after a few years, I realized that most stories don’t make it because of the same reasons. Time and time again, I open a submission (always reading without knowing the info of the author) and come across the same mistakes or faults in stories that keep a cool or fun idea from making it from a submission to an acceptance. Dear writer, I’m going to tell you these faults so that you can identify them in your own stories and make it out of the slush pile.

Because I do really want to see your stories out there. Even if I never read them, someone will, and they will love them.

One of the common issues I come across are dark openings. A dark opening is when a writer aims to be mysterious but doesn’t give the reader anything to hold on to. Often, the story opens with two characters exchanging a few lines of dialogue while doing some mundane task that is an overarching metaphor for the story. That in itself isn’t bad and can be found in a lot of great stories, but where the stories fail is in how they do this.

In dark openings, characters, along with their dialogue, are usually nondescript to the point where you can’t really tell who is saying what because everyone sounds the same, and they aren’t really having a conversation but are merely stating the story in a heavy-handed way. The correct way in doing these mysterious dialogue driven openings is to use metaphor less like metaphor and more like subtext so that the point comes in without feeling like it’s being fed to the reader. And, of course, all dialogue should be distinctive to the characters, but this is even more so important in an opening.

Not only does it show the reader the characters, but it shows them that you’re an author who knows your story and characters. It builds that very necessary and crucial bridge of trust between the writer and the reader.

Another thing that holds writers back is telling their story to the reader instead of showing their story to the reader. Commonly known as telling vs showing. Based on the stories I’ve read, my theory behind this bit of advice not sinking into writers is that they misunderstand what it means to show and to tell. Writers tend to do a lot of in your face telling masking as showing. For instance, during a fight scene, the reader will get a blow by blow of flailing arms and legs.

But that is not showing.

Showing does more than just show. Showing makes the reader feel. It calls forth the image of the scene or character to the reader’s mind. There are many ways to do this, but the top way is by using descriptive language and sentence structure to control reader emotion and story. Instead of giving a blow by blow of action, give a blow by blow of evocative internal workings. How does your character feel when slicing into their foe or friend or lover? Use the right words in the right order to create magic.

The final issue that many stories have, though there are many more, is that they start too late. For a story of any length, the editor looks for whether or not the writer has introduced world, theme, problem, and character within the first paragraph. But a lot of writers, choose to open their stories with something that they think will grab the attention of the reader or will paint a picture of the setting. But what will tell an editor of place or grab their attention won’t actually cue them in on what is important to this story and to the character.

Openings should introduce world, character, and problem at least on the first page. When it is not introduced, the editor is left wondering where the story is going, instead of wrapped up in its progression.

As you will have noticed, most of these issues happen in a story’s opening. That’s the only space you really have to win a reader or an editor over. And editors can feel or sense whether or not the story they dive into is written by a writer that knows what they are doing or by a writer who is just phoning it in because they don’t think they have to try.

If you take issue with this article and feel as though I am lying to you, then I leave you with this: it is my firm belief that every writer should become a slush reader, so that they may see the wide array of mistakes laden in stories. It will not only help you realize your own faults, but it will also show you that I am right.


Aigner Loren Wilson author photoBIO: Aigner Loren Wilson is a SFWA, HWA, and Codex writer whose stories and articles have appeared in Terraform, Rue Morgue, Arsenika, and more. She writes or edits for Strange Horizons, Nightlight: A Horror Podcast, NYC Midnight, and other outlets. To keep up to date on where she is publishing and other news, sign up for her newsletter, follow her on Instagram, or follow her blog.


If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines. Or if you’re looking for community from other F&SF writers, sign up for the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers Critclub!

 

This was a guest blog post.
Interested in blogging here?

Assembling an itinerary for a blog tour? Promoting a book, game, or other creative effort that’s related to fantasy, horror, or science fiction and want to write a guest post for me?

Alas, I cannot pay, but if that does not dissuade you, here’s the guidelines.

Guest posts are publicized on Twitter, several Facebook pages and groups, my newsletter, and in my weekly link round-ups; you are welcome to link to your site, social media, and other related material.

Send a 2-3 sentence description of the proposed piece along with relevant dates (if, for example, you want to time things with a book release) to cat AT kittywumpus.net. If it sounds good, I’ll let you know.

I prefer essays fall into one of the following areas but I’m open to interesting pitches:

  • Interesting and not much explored areas of writing
  • Writers or other individuals you have been inspired by
  • Your favorite kitchen and a recipe to cook in it
  • A recipe or description of a meal from your upcoming book
  • Women, PoC, LGBT, or otherwise disadvantaged creators in the history of speculative fiction, ranging from very early figures such as Margaret Cavendish and Mary Wollstonecraft up to the present day.
  • Women, PoC, LGBT, or other wise disadvantaged creators in the history of gaming, ranging from very early times up to the present day.
  • F&SF volunteer efforts you work with

Length is 500 words on up, but if you’ve got something stretching beyond 1500 words, you might consider splitting it up into a series.

When submitting the approved piece, please paste the text of the piece into the email. Please include 1-3 images, including a headshot or other representation of you, that can be used with the piece and a 100-150 word bio that includes a pointer to your website and social media presences. (You’re welcome to include other related links.)

Or, if video is more your thing, let me know if you’d like to do a 10-15 minute videochat for my YouTube channel. I’m happy to handle filming and adding subtitles, so if you want a video without that hassle, this is a reasonable way to get one created. ???? Send 2-3 possible topics along with information about what you’re promoting and its timeline.

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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."

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Guest Post: Michael Mammay on Reading Outside the Genre

Stephen King said, “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.” I don’t know many pro writers who disagree with him. We might debate how much reading is enough, and I think a lot of us struggle to find time for writing, reading, and the myriad other things we have to do to live. To me, that competition for time makes the time that I do have to read more important.

I’m a science fiction writer. Right now, I write military sci-fi thrillers. My debut novel, PLANETSIDE, came out in 2018 and the sequel, SPACESIDE, released in late August. I think it surprises people when I tell them that the biggest influence on PLANETSIDE was GONE GIRL, by Gillian Flynn. If you happened to have read both, you’re probably thinking to yourself”¦but wait”¦PLANETSIDE is nothing like GONE GIRL.

Of course it isn’t. Yet, here we are.

It was late 2014 and I’d just given up on a fairly bland fantasy novel I’d written in third person from three different points of view. It wasn’t exactly *bad* but it definitely wasn’t good enough. I’d had a kernel of an idea for this science fiction book in my head since I got back from Afghanistan””just a few notes that I’d jotted to myself while deployed””but I had no real plan to do anything with it. I was a bit burned out and had taken a few weeks off from writing. As I often do, I used that time to read. A critique partner of mine had just read GONE GIRL and recommended it. I read one chapter and I was hooked”¦the voice just exploded off the page.

That was it. That story idea in my head”¦it needed to be told in first person, and it needed a lot of voice. I sat down that night and wrote a short first chapter (that has subsequently been deleted) and sent it off to my most trusted readers. They loved it. They wanted more. Fast forward nine weeks and I had a first draft.

The influence didn’t stop there.

I didn’t start out to write what I did. In my mind, PLANETSIDE was going to be military science fiction. It’s set in a military science fiction world, and that’s how we market it (mostly), but I was as surprised as anyone when it turned into more of a mystery. I’ve come to love my twists. My hope when you sit down to read one of my novels is that I throw something at you that you don’t see coming. And who does that better than Gillian Flynn? Maybe Nelson Demille in THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER, which was another influence.

Even the voice of my main character owes some of its origin to mystery, taking a big cue from noir. I love Kristen Lepionka’s mysteries”¦I think we employ similar voice. I don’t think a reader has to be a noir fan to enjoy it, but I think taking elements that are fairly standard in one genre and translating them into another can feel fresh. We know a lot of the tropes of the genres we read most”¦and we love them”¦that’s why we read the genre. I think sometimes flipping the script on those tropes can be interesting too.

I’m not saying to avoid reading in your own genre. Not by a long shot. I probably read three books in sci-fi or fantasy for each one I read outside. But there are writers doing great things in every genre. By branching out, you might find something for your writer kit bag that you can use in a new way. It just might be the thing that makes your book stand out.

About the author: Michael Mammay is a science fiction writer. He is a retired army officer and a graduate of the United States Military Academy. He has a master’s degree in military history, and he currently teaches American literature. He is a veteran of Desert Storm, Somalia, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His debut novel, Planetside came out in July, 2018, and was selected as a Library Journal best book of 2018. The audio book, narrated by RC Bray, was nominated for an Audie award. The sequel, Spaceside, hit the shelves on August 27th, 2019. Michael lives with his wife in Georgia. You can find him on twitter (at)Michaelmammay or you can visit his website (note: website is michaelmammay dot com…don’t want to include a link in the email for risk of it going to spam)

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Guest Post from Everett Maroon: Becoming a Writer

coffeeEveryone always wants to know the writer’s writing origins, when for many of us we can’t recall the first time we scratched out a story. Was it a moment of inspiration, they want to know, a story we’d run across that needed our personal improvement? Or maybe we had somehow leaped over childhood development itself and landed in the middle of our search for identity only to discover that damn it, we were writers.

I don’t remember when I thought of myself as a writer, even if I know I bundled up in the front room of my parents house because it was cold enough to see my breath, and I banged away on a towering Royal typewriter, feeling every carriage return as small progress. But my writing genesis is far less interesting to me than its trajectory. I had no idea, making up tales about natural disasters and families and sea monsters, that I’d come to have certain inalienable opinions about my work thirty-plus years later. I write with purpose beyond that of simply selling my work””which don’t get me wrong, is a great goal, fellow authors””I write because there were books I needed in my youth and early adulthood that didn’t exist. I write to fill in at least a few of the gaps. I write for myself, of course, and sometimes I’m writing for one other person who will read the thing and send me a Facebook message saying they’d never seen themselves in a story before mine. I am so lucky to get the opportunity to write for even a few others who will find it resonant.

A professor friend of mine who is rather brilliant in many regards was almost boastful with me last week by declaring that she simply doesn’t read novels. The novel is a product of The Enlightenment, she said, all about a kind of egotism between a luxuriating individual (presumably because they have the time to read) and a narrative that centers their being through the protagonist or movement of the plot. It’s the very act of finding oneself in the text that she found so distasteful. But I ask, when do Americans not seek themselves in their lives? We are told to “find” careers that we love, we buy our sofas with our own comfort in mind, we make friends based on common interests and with the expectation that they will understand us. While it is useful to inquire into our relationship to literature, why only do this to literature and not everything in culture? And why is the best move to act like literature isn’t there?

I would rather engage the process of reading and writing, of authorship and ideology. My ponderous process of writing has led me through many questions about narrative itself and the late-capitalist products that support narrative, like novels, blogs, Internet free-for-alls of visual productions like House of Cards. I return again and again to the production gaps””whose stories aren’t being told, which communities aren’t heralded in the publishing industry, in Hollywood, in New York City””and I revisit the questions of our newest generation of readers. Yes, stories should destabilize the oversimplified identification with the protagonist. Good writing should push those boundaries, as well as resisting the expectations we have for form, genre, literary merit, and popularity. Great writing should speak to readers who have never before felt spoken to, who have before that latest moment always had to wrap themselves around the writing in order to engage the text.

I thought nothing about any of this when I first sat down in my childhood, even if the kinetic energy of these questions was always at my fingertips. Who I was in my earliest stages of writing was not very interesting. What I try to achieve with my writing today however, fascinates me. I take that as a good sign I am headed in the right direction.

BIO: Everett Maroon is a memoirist, humorist, pop culture commentator, and fiction writer. He has a B.A. in English from Syracuse University and is a member of the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association and was a finalist in their 2010 literary contest for memoir. Everett is the author of a memoir, Bumbling into Body Hair, and a young adult novel, The Unintentional Time Traveler, both published by Booktrope Editions. Everett blogs at transplantportation.com.

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